European University Institute Library

Coral empire, underwater oceans, colonial tropics, visual modernity, Ann Elias

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrationsplates

index present

non fiction

Coral empire

bibliography

1037059072

Ann Elias

underwater oceans, colonial tropics, visual modernity

"... In the 1920s John Williamson in the Bahamas and Frank Hurley in Australia produced mass-circulated and often highly stated photographs and films that cast corals as industrious, colonizing creaures, and the undersea as a virgin, unexplored, and fantastical territory ... [The author contends that] their modern media spectacles yoked the tropics and coral reefs to colonialism, racism, and the human domination of nature. Using the labor and knowledge of indigenous peoples while ... racializing them as inferior Others, Williamson and Hurley sustained colonial fantasies about people of color and ... their reckless treatment of the sea prefigured attitudes that caused the environmental crises that the oceans and reefs now face."--, Provided by publisher

Coral empire -- Mad love -- Williamson and the photosphere -- The Field Museum-Williamson undersea expedition -- Under the sea -- Williamson in Australia -- Hurley and the floor of the sea -- Hurley and the Australian Museum expedition -- Pearls and savages -- Hurley and the Torres Strait diver -- Explorers and modern media -- Color and tourism -- The Anthropocene